


Major Arcana

by puddingontheritz



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF, Sayonara Wild Hearts (Video Game)
Genre: Aromantic, Bespooked, But consent is obtained, Cabin Fic, F/F, F/M, Like, M/M, Magic, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Ooooops it's explicit now, Oral Sex, Pining, Rating May Change, Sayonara Wild Hearts - Freeform, Vaginal Fingering, magic is involved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-01-02 14:49:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puddingontheritz/pseuds/puddingontheritz
Summary: Jenna Stoeber doesn't much go in for the arcane. But when her vivid, disturbing dreams about her hot friend start bleeding over into real life at said hot friend's fun cabin weekend upstate, it's up to Jenna to dust off the ol' tarot deck and save her coworkers from whatever mischief is haunting the nearby woods.





	1. The High Priestess

It takes dreaming about the forest for the third night inside of a week for Jenna to start wondering if it’s more than just the off-gassing of an overworked, overactive, sexually frustrated mind.

It begins the same way every time, which is already unusual. Jenna’s never had a recurring dream before. But that’s not what gives her pause.

Nor is she really troubled by how familiar it all is, at the molecular level, like she’s a salmon called home to spawn. The butterfly—the stag—a blinding gibbous moon—the forest, beckoning darkly—and then the forest is Simone wearing her Dapper Dasha jacket, back arched, silhouetted like Tuxedo Mask against the moon (although somehow Jenna’s positive she’s smiling). _ Oh. _It all click-slides into place in some dark recess of her memory, and she’s already stepping forward when the outline of Simone-who-is-also-the-forest gestures at a point not far off in the woods, where something is gleaming pink and purple faintly between the trees. 

_ She will break your heart so completely that entire universes break with it. She will be the end of everything. _

Then Jenna’s awake, reeling with dream-vertigo and tangled in sheets cloying with sweat. She rolls out of the warm divot in the mattress and groans. What time is it? She checks her phone—six. Fuck. So much for sleeping in. She hesitates for a moment, only now feeling a vague disquiet settle over her, then slips a hand into her boxers to check—yep, soaking wet. Great. 

_ Do we deal with this? _she thinks, dragging an idle thumb down her opening, pressing gently on her clit with the heel of her hand. Deciding, she flips open her computer and pulls up Simone’s Pokemon Go video, turns the volume down to 1 and the speed to .75 for good measure and closes her eyes. It feels less weird if she closes her eyes. She’s still half-asleep, some part of her brain argues, so if she works quickly she can convince herself with some plausibility that she’s still dreaming.

  
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Simone has a short list of hard rules. One, this is explicitly Not A Work Thing (even though the invite list is exclusively Polygon or Polygon-adjacent folks); two, no barfing anywhere she has to clean up; and three, they are all required to take exactly one (1) trip at midnight into the Spooky Woods.

The cabin technically belongs to what Simone keeps referring to as her “dowager aunt,” but her whole family used to spend summers there and the eastern seaboard de Rochefort cousins apparently take turns using it for debauchery weekends. As she parks in the long beech-lined driveway and Simone, Jeff and Karen pile out of the truck, Jenna takes in the Queen Anne style house with its white-shuttered windows, expansive porch and patchwork of creeping vines. _ Oh yeah, this place is haunted as fuck. _

Simone, thoughtful host that she is, has offered to provide a flat of beer, her carefully curated array of artisanal weed and a big ol’ thing of chili. Beyond that, it’s potluck. Jenna made some edibles for her contribution—cookies and brownies and even some French almond candies she cobbled together out of three or four different internet recipes and which might very well be gross. Jeff has procured some fancy charcuterie, left over from a catering job on Friday. Karen made monkey bread. Pat and Clayton brought an embarrassment of rum and mojito mix. Brian brought a six pack of elderflower cider, a bunch of grapes “to put in the freezer for when we’re high and have oral fixations,” a stack of board games and his nice tarot deck.

“Brian oh my god, you motherfucking _ genius, _we have to bring these to Spooky Woods,” Simone says, snatching them out of his hands delightedly. “Jenna, you can do a reading, right?”

“I mean, it’s been a while,” Jenna says, stretching her back out from the drive. “What’s the focus of your question? Romance? Career?”

“If you do a career tarot reading in the spooky woods at midnight you are definitely a cop,” Pat says, pulling a cooler out of Brian’s trunk.

“Mm,” Jenna responds unthinking, taking the cards from Simone and pulling them out of their packaging. They’re a satisfying weight and texture, with beautiful polygonal designs on them. She looks more closely at the High Priestess and feels a swoop of recognition in her stomach, although she can’t quite identify why. It almost looks like—

“Lake first! Two to a bedroom, first come first serve, drop your things and get into swimsuits!” Simone hollers at the group at large. “Patrick, I will require a mojito forthwith!”

  
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The lake, as it turns out, is a small, green affair surrounded by pebbly dunes and clumps of dry grass. Karen, Brian and Pat are in first, shrieking and dancing on the chilly lapping shore until Jeff launches himself off the dock and engulfs them all in a massive wave.

Simone is more circumspect, perching on the edge of the dock and swirling her legs in the water, munching serenely on a leaf of mint from her mojito. Jenna arranges her shoes, socks and book on a patch of sand that’s out of splash range and sits down beside Simone. “Not going in?” 

“I will in a bit, I just wanna finish my drink and watch my cute friends swim around for a minute. Mint?”  
  
Jenna accepts the proffered leaf and nibbles at it. “This place is amazing. I can’t believe you’ve hidden it from us for so long.”

“Outsiders to the family need to survive a gauntlet of de Rochefort bullshit for at least two years in order to be deemed worthy of an invitation,” Simone replies, sipping serenely. “Hey, how’d your date go with whatshisface, the web design guy? I didn’t hear you come in last night.”

“Eh...fine. I got in around eleven. Neither of us has texted since, so.” Jenna leans back and folds her hands under her head, closing her eyes against the sun.

“Man, at this point you should be able to have a profile that just says, ‘I’m Jenna fucking Stoeber.’”

Jenna cackles. “Star of the stage and screen Jenna Stoeber.” She looks up at Simone, whose sunhatted head eclipses the sun behind her, framing her in a pale blue halo. “Maybe if you recorded me a sizzle reel. Really sell New York’s hot people on my attributes.”

“Yeah? You want me to get some of that SEO Play heat on your profile?” She slips into the voice easily: “A beautiful and magnificent island waiting to crush the unworthy on her rocky shoals, Ms. Stoeber’s many intellectual charms and social graces are eclipsed only by her powerful gams that go all the way up and make an ass of themselves.” Jenna can’t help but laugh, but that goof-ass buttery radio voice unearths the sense memory of this morning, half-asleep but heart racing, coming hard and fast with Simone whispering in her ear, and her insides roll over. 

Some of this thought process must be showing up on her face because Simone asks, “Too much?”

“No, no, it’s a strong start, we’ll workshop it. I don’t know, it might be time to blow up my Tinder account again. I’m feeling pretty burnt out.”

Simone makes a sympathetic noise, pulling deeply on her drink. “On the one hand, so valid. On the other hand, one of us really needs to be the pressure valve for the horny office energy, and it’s sure as hell not gonna be me.”

This _ is _too much, so before Simone can say anything else Jenna leans over to steal a sip of her mojito with an air of finality. “Come on, swim time!”

Without further preamble she slips into the water, hissing through her teeth. She knows she’ll be comfortable in a minute if she gets to shoulder-depth quickly. 

_ She will break your heart so completely that entire universes break with it. _

She grits her teeth, allows herself to drop like a stone until she’s fully under and she can just wiggle her toes on the bottom of the lake. The temperature is already becoming more bearable as the initial shock subsides. Cautiously, she opens her eyes, finds a dim green world with motes of pond grit floating around her like stars. She feels a splash, hears Simone’s muted shriek at the temperature, sees a lithe white shape with fronds of dark hair rising from it like smoke. 

_ She will be the end of everything. _

There’s a change in texture at the bottom of the lake, gritty sand giving way to something smooth and cold. Jenna looks down in surprise, finds that the bottom of the lake gives way in one spot to geometric panels of what feels like metal. A few feet away, the panels slope down into a recess about three feet across. She flips over and handstand-walks towards the hole, peers as best she can through her stinging eyes into it. A drain? She hadn’t taken this for an artificial lake, but it’s possible. She makes a mental note to ask Simone. The little bit of sunlight filtering its way down here reflects eerily off of whatever material this is, which looks more like glazed ceramic on closer inspection. Like an oil slick, or a magpie’s feather. Pinky-orangey-purpley-green.

She grabs onto the edge of one of the panels with her fingernails and pulls her way deeper into the chasm, feeling around with her other hand for the bottom. The bottom doesn’t come, and instead of getting darker the deeper she goes, the panels seem to be emanating a faint glow, as if they were producing rather than reflecting light. Some distant part of Jenna’s brain wonders how long she’s gone without a breath, but she bats the thought away, irritated. The hole is getting wider now, and Jenna’s eyes have adjusted enough that she can make out that the panels of—metal, clay, whatever—are heart-shaped. She feels the place where their edges meet, cookie-cutter sharp. It reminds her of something. A place she’s been.

The voice at the back of her mind whispers again, more insistently this time, _ You need air to live, dumbass. _With a jolt, Jenna realizes she’s seeing bright splotches of colour at the back of her eyes. She pushes her way up out of the hole and gets her feet under her, but the surface of the lake now seems distant as the sun. She kicks her legs frantically, chest burning with the need for oxygen, fighting hard against the urge to gasp, she can see the outline of the dock now but something seems to be fighting to pull her down—

She bursts into the fresh air, startling Brian a couple of feet away from her, who yells, “Holy shit Jenna where did you come from?” Karen laughs at him, which earns her a splash, which escalates into a splash fight. Once the attention’s safely elsewhere, Jenna swims back to the dock and hangs onto the edge, taking slow, deep breaths. Only Clayton, who’s floating by on an inflatable pineapple, seems to have noticed anything. “You okay?”

“Fine, yeah. Accidentally inhaled some water.”

Once Clayton’s floated away, Jenna dips her head back under the water and opens her eyes. She can see clear to the bottom, some six feet down, an expanse of pebbles, gritty sand and stringy plants. 

  
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The early evening is a long, lazy parade of moments, of smoking on the porch and drifting around on the lake and fighting for control of the Spotify queue and finding shitty presents for each other—like, Brian returns from the lake with a pinecone and presents it to Pat, saying, “I made you this.” Pat then hugs Simone tenderly and presses the same pinecone into her hand, whispering, “I made you this.” 

Simone does the same thing to Jenna in the kitchen while the latter is monitoring the chili, slipping it into her apron front pocket while shushing over Jenna’s protests, laying one finger over Jenna’s lips before backing out of the kitchen. Jenna relocates the pine cone to her dress pocket, intending to regift it to Clay or Karen or someone next, but instead it just stays there, crumbling over the course of the evening and shedding bits of dirt and forest detritus that will be a pain to clean out later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, it's cabin fic o'clock! This was supposed to be a Polygolidays request, but then I tripped and wrote 2,000 horny words about Sayonara Wild Hearts feat. folks from Polygon and I figured I should probably just do the damn thing myself.


	2. The Hanged Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s it mean?” Brian prompts. 
> 
> “Grief,” Simone says. “Heartbreak.” Jenna looks up in surprise—and is startled by the wildness she finds there, as if Simone were looking at something far away and terrifying. She will be the end of everything. She will split your heart open and spill decay and despair over the earth.

The sun isn’t setting but is definitely considering it by the time they all collapse, mostly dried off and exhausted, on the massive couches in the front room, full of chili and charcuterie and ready for some slightly less physically demanding entertainment. Only Pat and Brian are weirdly jazzed, advocating for Spooky Woods.

“It’s fuckin’ nine o’clock, the woods are not spooky yet,” Simone scoffs. 

“Oh boy, we need to think of something to do that’ll keep me awake until the woods get spooky,” says Jenna. “Y’all gave me sleepy juice and I keep baker’s hours usually.” 

“Spin the bottle,” Brian offers from upside-down on the couch, legs hooked over the backrest. 

“Truth or dare,” Jeff pipes up from the chaise lounge at the same time as Karen hollers, “Sardines!”

“Spin the bottle truth or dare sardines it is,” Simone proclaims, raising both hands in the air like a ref making a call. 

Clayton laughs, but Pat, who’s draped over Clayton like a mojito-wielding cat, looks thoughtful. “How would that work, exactly? Like, does one person hide, spin the bottle, and then execute a dare?”

“No, listen, one person hides, each person who finds them has to kiss someone, and the last person to find the group has to do a truth or dare,” Brian says, with a glint in his eyes that Jenna knows all too well means that someday, when they least expect it, he will make them all play spin the bottle truth or dare sardines. 

“Yeah, but Clay’s dungeon master and he gets to pick who kisses who,” Pat embellishes, to general laughter; Clayton, the only one in the room sitting on the couch like a person with his hands in his lap, says, “Please don’t,” so quietly that Jenna isn’t sure he actually said it. His facial expressions are hard to read through the beard, but Jenna clocks his knuckles whiten slightly, his left hand gripping his right just a little too hard.

“Brian brought about a thousand board games, what about one of them?” Jenna suggests.

“No, I know, tell me my future!” Simone says, grabbing the tarot deck off the stack of games and throwing them at Jenna, who catches them with one hand. “I thought that was for Spooky Woods,” she says, smiling slightly.

“We can do readings for you guys in Spooky Woods,” Simone protests, flopping upside down beside Brian so her hair spills out over the floor. “I want mine now while I’m too drunk to get freaked out by the implications.”

“I mean, that’s not really what a Tarot reading is for,” Jenna protests, but she’s already pulling the deck out of its packaging, again examining the strange stylized art.

“This seems pretty mystical for you,” Clayton observes.

“I have my witchy side,” Jenna says, smirking. “But yeah, mostly I like it as a storytelling mechanism; it’s like a guided exercise for self-analysis, which I think is really cool. It’s basically cheap therapy.” She’s only half listening to herself talk, focusing mostly on the cards, on clearing them and her mind as she separates the Major Arcana from the rest of the deck, cuts the Minor Arcana into three piles and places each pile face-down. 

“Where did you learn all this?” Brian asks, repositioning himself cross-legged by the coffee table to watch as Jenna lays out cards in front of her. 

“Summer camp. I went to this all-girls outdoor school in Michigan; it was like a queer witchy paradise. There was a girl in my dorm who was obsessed with tarot, and she always had a bunch of different decks on her.” She does not add that the girl would do readings when they snuck off to the woods by the rope course to make out, humming the names of the cards into Jenna’s neck as she drew them. “The Rider-Waite is the easiest—the one with the Cups and Swords and whatnot—but I used to know how to read a bunch of different decks. There,” she says as she shuffles the final pile one last time and lays it down with a flourish. 

Simone wriggles eagerly down from the couch, landing with a soft thwump and settling on her knees in front of the table. Jenna pauses with one hand on the first stack to the left. “Okay, so, is there anything in particular you’re looking to learn from the cards, or stuff about yourself you’re looking to explore?”

The others have suggestions. “Romance!” Brian yells immediately. “Yeah, do a fucking one!” Pat contributes, chucking an olive at Brian’s head. Simone grimaces theatrically. 

“Tell us what’s going to happen to us in Spooky Woods,” Karen calls from the kitchen where she’s topping up her mojito.

“Ooh, that’s so good,” Jenna says gratefully. She flips the top card of the Major Arcana pile and freezes, the realization finally dawning on her. It’s Simone, the Simone from her dream. It doesn’t look much like her, obviously, but...it just  _ is  _ her, Jenna can feel the certainty heavy in her gut. 

“The High Priestess,” she says hoarsely. “This is the card that provides the theme for the rest of the reading. It’s all about intuition, unconscious thought, your inner voice.”

“So, a bunch of open-ended bullshit,” Jeff giggles.

“Yeah, it’s almost as if each card is super vague and open to interpretation,” Pat says.

“Well yeah, it’s a narrative tool, there isn’t one right way to read them,” Jenna reminds them. She flips the first card on the left. It shows an injured man propped up on a wand, standing before a cluster of eight more wands.

“Okay, so the first card always refers to the material, embodied plane, and the Nine of Wands is all about trial by fire—something that requires resilience, persistence, courage. Maybe you’ll face something in Spooky Woods that will test your physical endurance.”

“So watch out for like, tripping, I guess,” Karen offers sagely.

Jenna flips the next card. “In the mind position, you’ve got your...Knight of Cups.” She frowns, thinking. “This is about ideals, romance, following your heart. To...spookiness, I guess.”

“Story checks out,” Simone says. She’s focusing intently now, childlike and serious, tugging absentmindedly with both hands at the rope of hair over her left shoulder. Jenna suppresses the spring of affection and longing that bubbles up in her throat and looks back down at the cards.

“And finally, in the spiritual position, we’ve got…” she flips the last card. Three of Swords. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She’s quiet for so long, lost in staring at the cards, that Jeff eventually says, “Ruh roh,” and Brian giggles nervously. 

“So, this one is not great,” Jenna starts, but her thoughts are unspooling, her tongue is tied, she’s back in the lake with panes of white metal or shining clay or perhaps opaque glass all around her, snapping together like magnets, edges sharp as knives; they radiate a cool, soft light that wraps around her, fills her mouth, makes her limbs feel heavy...

“What’s it mean?” Brian prompts. 

“Grief,” Simone says. “Heartbreak.” Jenna looks up in surprise—and is startled by the wildness she finds there, as if Simone were looking at something far away and terrifying.  _ She will be the end of everything. She will split your heart open and spill decay and despair over the earth. _

The lightbulb in the lamp overhead makes a tinkling, snapping noise and stutters out. Jeff fully shrieks at the tiny sound, which makes them all giggle, the spell of the moment breaking. “Jenna, you brought a spooky presence down on us!” Karen yells, clapping at her accusingly.

“Are there fresh bulbs somewhere I can grab?” Jenna asks, eager for something to do. 

Whatever Simone saw that shook her so badly, it’s vanished. “Don’t worry about it, those ones are a pain to change, I’ll do it in the morning. Just turn on the little lamps. Actually, I think there are a bunch of flashlights and candles in the top drawer of the entertainment unit, if we wanna grab ’em.”

“Fuck yeah, Spooky Woods!” Pat fist pumps, and the room at large returns the call of “Spooky Woods,” as if they were making a toast. Brian takes charge of lighting candles and putting them all around the room like they’re holding a seance. Jeff finds a deck of regular playing cards and starts arranging a drinking game of some sort. Pat starts on a fresh batch of mojitos, and Simone’s gotten her second wind with a vengeance, cranking the volume on the speaker and pulling Karen into a sloppy tango. Pretty soon the room is awash with warm pricks of light and ringing with drunk gaiety and affectionate shit-talking, but the back of Jenna’s neck is still prickling uncomfortably. She looks over at Simone, pretzeled on the couch and honking helplessly at something Jeff’s saying, and she could almost swear she sees a shred of the haunted expression from before.  _ Hit dogs holler,  _ she thinks. 

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They find a GameCube tucked into the entertainment unit with Double Dash inside, so the drinking game naturally evolves into Drinking Mario Kart. Pat suggests they make it more interesting, Gill and Gilbert style, by requiring that P2 of each team play from P1’s back, and that they be allowed to throw bits of food and pillows to distract their competitors. Brian, from Jeff’s back, has just prompted a total wipeout of team Simone-and-Pat by sticking a tongue in Pat’s ear when Jenna slips out to the porch. After the noisy hilarity of inside, it feels almost impossibly quiet. She lies down on the deck, which smells like cedar and lacquer and is still warm from the heat of the day. She had hoped to see some lightning bugs out here, but maybe it’s not quite the season yet. The stars are something, though, and she drinks them in while taking deep, slow breaths.

The screen door creaks; she turns her head to see Clayton’s shoes and breathes an inward sigh of relief. She loves her coworkers, but fill them with rum and space cakes and they all become versions of themselves with the saturation turned way up: Brian’s desperation for validation and attention, Pat’s prickly resistance to same, Simone’s keyed-up unpredictability—they all start to feed off of one another and become over-bright caricatures. Clayton just becomes hyper-present and nurturing in a way that feels like a cool hand on the back of Jenna’s neck.

“Hey,” he says and eases down onto the deck beside her, stretching out with a groan so that their heads are a foot away from each other and they can chat quietly.

“Quite a place, huh,” Jenna says after a time.

“Good to be a dowager aunt, I guess,” Clayton agrees.

Jenna snorts. “Yeah, nice work if you can get it.” They’re silent a while longer, watching a wispy cloud pass over the moon. “Strange energy in there tonight,” Clayton remarks eventually.

“I know!” Jenna says emphatically. “What’s going on with everyone?”

“Maybe it’s the house,” Clayton muses.

“What, we’re under the thrall of, like, horny dowager aunt vibes?”

“Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised if the de Rocheforts were a pretty spooky bunch.”

Jenna nods and hears herself asking, “Hey Clay, do you like Pat?”

“Yes,” Clayton answers evenly, like he’s been waiting to be asked and has a statement prepared. 

“You gonna do anything about it?”

Clayton’s quiet awhile, meditative. “No,” he finally says. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, we’ve made out a couple of times, but he needs to be super drunk, and I just don’t feel great about that. Which is honestly fine; I’m happy to be his friend. I’m not sure I know how to make room in my life for anyone else, anyway.” He pulls a piece of thread out of his sweater, winds it around his finger and looks at it. “What about you and Simone?”

Jenna huffs out a sigh, caught off guard at the confidence of his tone. Not even  _ do you like Simone.  _ She has no prepared statement, mostly on account of the fact that she doesn’t know the answer herself. Simone’s…attractive, obviously. Jenna remembers that morning, remembers waking up clammy and confused and more aroused than she’s ever been in her life...

“Yeah, I mean...I think we...we’re good as friends,” Jenna finishes clumsily, then tries again. “Okay, so, Simone’s aromantic, right? And when I started at Polygon I was on my way out of a toxic thing, and...it just felt real easy to flirt and have this fun work crush, and not be in a position to do anything about it, and to just press on that bruise a little bit. And now...” She sighs again, frustrated. “I don’t know. We live together, and she's so important to me, and I definitely don’t want her to feel like I’m trying to—to fix her or something. But I don’t really feel...casual about it anymore.” Clayton makes a sympathetic noise, and they lapse back into a comfortable silence.

Frowning, Jenna looks over at Clayton. “What the fuck is a dowager, exactly?”

He opens his mouth, pauses, then laughs. “I have no fucking clue.” He turns his head to smile at Jenna and is quite suddenly much closer than she’d thought—she can see the blond in his beard and the translucent tips of his eyelashes. His eyes are slightly different colours, she notices. 

He’s the first to lean in, but it’s a close thing—the kiss is so effortless they could just be bending with the wind like two trees brushing branches, except that there’s no wind at all. They’re the only movement for miles around, it seems, lazily pressing lips on lips and breathing gently on each other’s chins, opening up ever so slightly to invite further investigation—

A crow flies out of a tree nearby, startling them apart so abruptly that their lips make a cartoon  _ smack _ sound as they disengage. They’re silent a moment, and then they’re both laughing so hard that five more crows fly off indignantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise things get hornier and gayer soon.
> 
> Shout out to Clayton for being the soothing rock upon which the horny Polygon waves break; we do not deserve him


	3. The Moon

When they rejoin the party, Mario Kart has been abandoned and Jeff and Karen are arguing about the rules of a different game. Simone bounds over and grabs Jenna and Clayton’s hands, dragging them into the fray. 

“There you are! Okay, that’s everyone. I’m first,” she says with authority. 

“So are we agreed on all rooms allowed, no turning on lights?” Jeff says.

“What are we doing?” Clayton asks.

They’ve settled on sardines, vanilla edition, thank sweet baby Jesus. Simone pads noiselessly away as the rest of them close their eyes and count. When they yell _ twenty! _ and scatter, Jenna makes an immediate beeline for the stairs to the basement—not with any real notion that Simone’s hiding there, but just because it’s a big weird, old house, and she’s been itching to explore since they arrived. 

She wanders aimlessly down the uneven stairs, absent-mindedly dragging her hand along the cool cement wall. The noise throughout the house has dropped off somewhat, which probably means that at least a few people have found Simone already, but Jenna really doubts she’ll be able to stay quiet for much longer. No hurry. She peeks in doors, finding an electrical cupboard and a not very well stocked cellar, but nothing much more interesting until she comes to the end of the narrow hallway and a second staircase, leading to a closed door—up to the boot room by the back door, maybe? She’s about to head up when she notices a small, square door set into the baseboard of the staircase.

A laundry chute? Weird, tiny storage? She squats down and tugs on the dusty round knob, and it gives with some resistance, revealing—yep, laundry chute, looks like. Not uncommon in old houses like this. A little deflated, she feels around inside the chute, just in case the good dowager or some long-dead infant relative left a treasure in here at some point to reward the careful explorer. She’s drawing out a handful of dust bunnies when the hairs on top of her wrist start to prickle, then her hand is ice cold like she's reaching into a freezer. 

Okay, so, Jeff said no turning on lights. But Jenna’s the only one down here, she thinks as she reaches in her pocket for her phone; and she doesn’t want to spoil the game—she only wants to see—

She thumbs open her phone and opens the flashlight app, and a light blooms into the dark little corridor, throwing Jenna’s fingerprints smeared through the dust into sharp relief, but it’s softer, less direct than a phone flashlight. The coruscating mother-of-pearl glow keeps growing when Jenna pockets her phone, and her stomach flips over as a moist breeze trickles of the chute and raises goosebumps on her bare arms. 

As she’s steeling herself to slide down on her stomach, really get a proper look in there, she hears something from the landing above, pulling her senses mercifully out of the chute. She pauses to listen and—yep, she definitely hears the floor creaking and someone whispering.

Look: the basement will still be here after the game. She can bring Simone with her and make _ her _ open the tiny murder-door and make _ her _explain the cold, iridescent unobtanium at the bottom of the lake, and they can all have a good chuckle at the series of non-incidents that are accumulating enough to make Jenna feel genuinely a little bespooked. 

She creeps up the stairs, quiet as a mouse, opens the door to a moonlit little parlour she doesn’t recognize, and freezes at the sight of Brian crowded in the corner of the room, head thrown back and glasses half fogged over. Pat has him up against a grand piano and is mouthing sloppily at his Adam’s apple, one hand twisting in Brian’s hair while the other is pawing between his legs. He’s murmuring something into Brian’s neck—Jenna catches the words “upstairs” and “hear you.” Jenna stands dumb for a moment, taking in the tableau, coarse and vivid and garish as a Tijuana bible.

“Ah,” Brian chokes out—and looks up, meeting Jenna’s gaze with a flash of panic. 

Jenna takes a step back, feeling her face flood with heat, forgetting momentarily about the stairs right behind her. 

She scrambles to get her feet back under her, grabbing at the air where a railing should be in this fucking deathtrap haunted mansion. Mind racing and decade-old gymnastics training kicking in, she assumes a braced posture that will hopefully lessen the impact of her fall. 

She just has time to think _ this is so dumb _ in the moment before her vision goes black and she passes out. 

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The first thing Jenna sees upon opening her eyes is the weird little chandelier in the spare bedroom where she’d dropped her things that afternoon, cough-drop red crystals shaking just a little from footsteps vibrating the floor. Dowager de Rochefort certainly made some strong décor choices.

“Oh thank Christ, you’re awake,” she hears somewhere to her right. The chandelier crystals wiggle more vigorously as Simone strides over to the bed, looking stricken and paler than usual.

“Reporting for duty,” Jenna groans, squinting against the light as the room comes into sharper focus.

“Lie back, you might have a concussion,” Simone orders.

“Yeah, well, you’re not my dad, so,” Jenna says, struggling to sit up in spite of her pounding head.

Simone disappears again, and Jenna can hear her rummaging in the half-bath across the hall. “No, I’m your _ daddy_,” she purrs, and Jenna falls back onto the pillow with a groan that’s equal parts annoyance and genuine pain as Simone honks mercilessly. “Look, be cool for two seconds, I’ve got just the thing to make you feel better.” When she reappears with two pills and a glass of water, Jenna’s mental faculties have rallied enough to notice Simone’s wearing a 1920s-style silk kimono, loosely tied at the waist so that a flash of bright skin down to almost her stomach is visible. The curve of her breasts is contoured in the shadowy light cast by the overhead lamp. 

Yes, yep, that’ll do it, Jenna thinks, acutely aware of a warm buzz spidering out from her stomach to her other organs. She’d hardly be surprised if cartoon steam was pouring out her ears. Simone sets the glass of water on the bedside table and hands Jenna two tylenols, which she takes. She then sits down beside Jenna on the edge of the bed and Jenna can’t help but flinch away, afraid she’ll be able to feel Jenna’s arousal through her skin somehow. 

Simone’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Relax, I just wanna have a look. Make sure your noggin’s intact.”

Jenna wills herself to obey, to relax into the touch, and after a moment Simone’s cool fingers do actually feel quite soothing, gently cradling her neck and moving her hair to examine her aching head. Jenna lets her eyes flutter closed. “Where’s everyone else?” 

Simone shrugs, continuing to tenderly inspect Jenna’s crown for bumps or cuts. “The game kinda petered out when we heard you fall.”

“Sorry for killing the mood with my near-death incident.”

“Don’t be,” Simone says, smirking. “I bet by now Pat and Brian’ve skulked off to consummate whatever’s been brewing between them tonight. Whoa, you okay?”

Jenna’s head had jerked suddenly upward in surprise and then come smacking back down against the solid wood headboard, a consequence of suddenly remembering what she glimpsed that caused her to fall down the stairs. “Yeah, fine,” she mutters, although lights are popping in her vision. 

“Here, you could probably use another pillow under there. Scoot up for a second,” Simone orders, and Jenna dutifully scoots while Simone slides another lumpy guest pillow beneath her head. In the process of doing so, Simone’s robe hangs loose around her shoulders, revealing a smooth, dazzling expanse of stomach and tits and Jenna realizes a second too late that she’s staring. This fucking day, she thinks as she wrenches her eyes back up to the chandelier. There’s a reason the Polygon word cloud is just “HORNY” in 52-point font.

“It’s okay to look, you know,” Simone says quietly, pulling Jenna out of her own head at whiplash speed. Jenna’s eyes fall back to Simone’s face and find her expression soft, knowing. 

“You can even touch, if you want to,” she continues, catching Jenna’s gaze in her own so that she’s trapped for a long, helpless moment in an agony of stillness. 

Simone laughs at Jenna’s paralyzed expression, finally taking her hand and slipping it decisively inside the kimono. “Come on, it’s medicine,” she says still more quietly, then shivers as Jenna’s thumb rubs a tentative circle around her nipple. 

“This feels pretty weird,” Jenna whispers, even though her hands are getting braver now, the left freeing Simone’s shoulders entirely from the kimono while the right traces up her stomach, around to her waist, down to press lightly into the pliant flesh of her lower back….

“Bad weird?” Simone asks right by the top of Jenna’s ear, although she sounds unconvinced. “Do you want me to stop?” Jenna shakes her head, which makes her vision swim unpleasantly. “Well then,” Simone hums, lips vibrating against Jenna’s temple. She pulls back to look Jenna in the eye and kisses her on the lips, slow and soft.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this,” she says as she knees Jenna’s legs apart, crawling onto the bed to loom over her.

“Someone’s going to hear us,” Jenna says breathlessly, but she’s turning her head to expose more of her neck and spreading her knees to further invite Simone into her space. “They won’t,” Simone replies simply, shrugging off the robe so it slithers to the floor. “Just relax.”

Jenna’s confused for a moment, says “How—” but then she has to stifle a moan because Simone’s reached up her dress, hooking two fingers into her boyshorts and dragging up the sensitive edge of her labia. With her other hand, she’s bracing herself on the headboard and and arching her back so that Jenna can get her mouth on her. God damn but she’s _soft, _her tits perfect handfuls soft and downy with peach fuzz, nipples sharp and sensitive. Jenna sucks one of them into her mouth, nips just a little, pressing her tongue against the underside of the areola.

“Ha, Jesus,” Simone huffs, winding long slim fingers in Jenna’s hair for a firmer grip, cradling her head to put her mouth where she wants it. Between Simone’s encouraging noises and her nails still running lightly up and down the seam of her underwear, Jenna can feel her groin and thigh muscles clenching and unclenching, tired of waiting their turn to be touched.

“Can I make you feel good?” Simone asks, and for the first time her voice sounds high and tight with need. Jenna nods and Simone slithers down the bed, pausing to kiss Jenna hot and wet on the mouth, then leans back on her haunches and settles Jenna’s dress skirt around her knees, just rubbing teasing knuckles up and down the wet spot over her slit. She can’t remember the last time she was so—so wet but more than that, plush and open as moss, sensitive and shivering beneath Simone’s careful ministrations—

“Holy fuck, your hands are ice-cold,” Jenna gasps, the shock of the temperature mingling with the gut-punch sweetness of Simone’s fingers slipping inside of her. She can feel Simone’s laughter vibrating against her inner thigh, along with little apologetic kisses that burn like brands of frost and sink immediately into her bones. Jenna tries to peer down her stomach at Simone with her sharp witch’s mouth and her hair spread dark as kelp over her bare shoulders, but she finds that she can’t lift her head; and she can’t quite feel as worried as she’s worried she should be, her senses too heavy with pleasure, her synapses too thick with the smell of her own desire and something else, too—a dark, vegetal, rain-soaked tang that fills her nose and mouth and eyes and drags her somewhere deep in her subconscious. 

_ The butterfly—the wolf—a blinding moon— _

And then Simone’s hands are wrapping around Jenna’s thighs and she’s bending down, tongue swirling delicately around her clit and one cheek pressed to her inner thigh, and Jenna lets go with a sigh as it becomes impossible to think about anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to me, here's a chapter! I forgot to post this last time, I made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/58daMhb8aLVMUmpUMPHzJK?si=nq-2KHpARn6trllKnJcktA) to go with this story (beware: spoilies)
> 
> I have no idea how many chapters this baby holds, but I guess I'll keep chugging along until it's done. Please pray for me


	4. The Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenna's vision is swimming, and she could almost swear she sees two distinct Simones: the first a laughing imp like the day they met, face full of mischief, her hand warm and real and solid; the second distant and obscure, the Simone that showed Jenna how to touch her on the little spare room bed (was that really an hour ago?), whispering, “Come on, it’s medicine,” before making Jenna feel impossibly, unspoolingly good.

“SPOOKY WOODS,” Simone hollers, whacking an overhead tree branch with a stick for emphasis. Jeff shushes her, giggling, and Pat whispers something to Brian that makes him wheeze helplessly. An impossibly bright moon whips down through the canopy of branches, giving the forest floor the dazzling effect of a rave.

Jenna catches herself before tripping over a root and takes a few deep, shaky breaths. In, hold for five. Out, hold for five. Everything’s fine, you’re safe. In. Hold. Out.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Karen asks from just ahead.

“There’s this clearing that usually has fairy rings this time of year, if I can find it,” Simone calls back.

“Fairy rings?” Brian asks, running his fingers through the tall grass as he walks.

“They’re circles of mushrooms with the same fungal mat,” Jenna pipes up automatically, enthusiasm for mycology poking its head out of her foggy brain. “Hey, what time is it?”

“Uh, 12:30?” Brian looks at his watch. “Yep, thereabouts. Why, you’re not thinking of getting snoozy again?”

Jenna shrugs. “Nope, just...wanna make sure we’re punctual for the witching hour.”

While she picks over roots and under tendrils of old man’s beard, Jenna tries to think clearly about the last three hours. Did she and Simone actually hook up, or was that just a hallucination borne of the one-two punch of concussion and horny? On closer inspection, it does all seem too soft-focus and fantasy-cinematic to be real. If this were a horror movie she’d probably dock it marks for being too male gaze-y.

But then, she’s also not 100% sure that she actually fell in the first place—she does a quick mental sweep of her body for aches or bruises and finds none. So, working backward: the sardines game and Pat and Brian and the tumble down the stairs could’ve all been a dream, the product of getting way too high and accidentally having a fucked up 8:00pm nap. So, what’s her last real memory?

Clayton nudges her, knocking her out of her reverie. “You good?”

Jenna opens her mouth automatically to say she’s fine, but she stops herself halfway there, realizing this could be her chance to suss out whether anyone else feels reality sliding precariously around beneath them. If any one of them is immune to whatever the fuck is going on tonight, Jenna reasons, it would be Clayton.

“I think I may have smoked too much,” she says cautiously. A glance to her right finds that Clayton’s neck and jaw are tense, his eyes too wide. “Are _you_ good?” she asks. “You look kind of weirded out.” He looks scared, she realizes. It dawns on her with icy certainty that she’s never seen Clayton scared before.

“We’re here,” Simone calls, and within a moment she’s spread out on her back on a patch of moss, wriggling luxuriously.

“Wooooow,” Brian coos, stepping to the middle of one of the rounds of white mushrooms. “They’re so perfect.”

Jenna looks around. Moonlight’s spilling down through the canopy, falling lacy on the little clearing and making the mushrooms seem to shimmer. It’s beautiful here, and familiar, in a way that she’s coming to dread.

Pat starts up a chant of “Spooky Woods” again, Brian’s dancing around in time with the chant and Karen’s trying to take a polaroid that will inevitably just be a bunch of grey-and-black blotches. Jeff pulls a blanket out of a satchel and spreads it out, but the others are already making themselves at home in the clearing, curling up or stretching out on the springy ground. They look for all the world as if they sprouted up here like Cabbage Patch Kids.

“Who wants to be big spoon?” Simone pats the ground next to her, looking at Jenna. Jeff pencil-rolls over and pulls Simone in for a snuggle, making her giggle. Pat paws at Clayton’s shins, ineffectually trying to drag him down into the moss. “Clay-Clay, where’s that joint I gave you earlier?” Clayton finally relents, sitting down with a luxurious _oof_.

Simone’s reaching out her hand now, like you would to a reluctant toddler crossing the street, and looking up at Jenna so sweetly, and Jenna’s only a mortal woman. She takes the outstretched hand and lets herself be guided to all fours, making a noise of delighted surprise as her fingers find the moss light and springy as wool.

“Man, it’s so warm.”

“I know! What if we sleep out here?”

It’s the oddest sensation: Jenna feels more tranquil than she ever has in her life, still and quiet as the moss beneath her as her friends’ voices cover her with an undifferentiated blanket of noise; and yet she’s completely awake, her heart racing, the breeze scudding over her skin like a cloud passing over the ocean, her thoughts moving too quickly for her to catch and examine. She closes her eyes just to still some of the sensation and she feels a hand slip into her own, the warm pulse beneath the skin coming easily into stride with her heartbeat.

_The stag—the wolf—a blinding moon—the forest, laid out like a map, a tinker town and yet somehow bigger and more sprawling than Manhattan—unfathomable depths, beckoning darkly, teasing, slipping hooks behind their chests and tugging them slowly into its embrace—_

Motes of light float by, and sleepily Jenna rejoices that she got to see fireflies out here after all. Weird that they’re pink though...

She doesn’t have time to further examine the puzzling realization before she’s off and drifting farther and farther away from herself, too far to reach.

** **  
**** ****  
*********  
*******  
*****  
***  
* 

_Tara is giving the new hires a tour of the office and introducing people as they go. The other new guy, Brian, keeps smiling sheepishly over at Jenna, and she smiles back with what she hopes is a confident, reassuring air. He seems nice, and Jenna works to repress the wellspring of annoyance that bubbles up at these little commiserating glances. Jenna has a masters in media and culture, has held many jobs and is a Grown Ass Lady, but she was still up half the night wrestling with imposter syndrome, and being marched around next to this big-eyed, milk-faced college infant_ _only makes her feel more slow and shy and Wisconsinite._

_ “And this is where most of the video team works,” Tara is saying, and Jenna is confronted with an angular, pleasantly scruffy face and a witchy, glamorous one, belonging respectively to Patrick Gill, lead producer of the video team, and Simone de Rochefort. She knows both faces well from Polygon’s YouTube channel, and seeing them in the flesh plunges her into a fresh wave of shyness. _

_ “Hi Jenna,” Simone is saying, seconds before Jenna says, “Hi, I’m Jenna,” taking and shaking the proffered hand. She colours and laughs at herself. “What? Hello!” _

_ Still holding Jenna’s hand, Simone tosses back her head and cackles, showing all her teeth and reinforcing Jenna’s impression that she’s a selkie or a kappa, something that drowns hapless sailors if they’re not careful. _

_ All at once, in the midst of the imposter syndrome, the jet lag, the move, the stress, the increasingly frequent chilly silences and tart exchanges at home, Jenna feels a shiver pass over her. It reminds her of the first week of September and going back to school;  _ _ of sundown on Halloween;  _ _ of the first westerly breeze in spring that lets you know the earth is stirring under all the snow. That hard-to-place itch of change that sometimes overwhelms her and makes her feel like something important and magical is going to happen to her.  _

** **  
**** ****  
*********  
*******  
*****  
***  
* 

Jenna’s eyes snap open and her consciousness comes racing back into focus so abruptly that she nearly retches. Fighting down the nausea, she takes in Jeff, Karen and Brian supine on the ground off to her right, out cold—and threading among them a wolf, moving with catlike grace despite being the size of a small truck. It sports three heads, Jenna notes with some surprise, each jaw bristling with teeth like knives and eyes like burning coals.

With some effort, Jenna lolls her head to the left, thinking it only prudent to check for her other friends. There’s Clayton, some paces away, but no sign of Pat or Simone. She struggles to sit up, her head pounding and her gut heavy with confusion, but in a moment Simone is there, stepping precisely among their concussed friends to loom over Jenna, smiling with teeth bright as the moon. 

“Hold still,” she says, crouching down and laying a hand lightly over Jenna’s mouth, but there’s no need—Jenna is already immobilized, mesmerized by the sharp points of Simone’s eyes, the impish curve of her chin, the waxing and waning of her thin mouth, breathing noisily; the remote, hungry set to her eyes, looking through and beyond Jenna at whatever is so interesting underneath her skin.

She’s not sure whether it’s pain or pleasure coursing through her limbs, making her fingers tingle and her knees tremble. Her synapses are firing a 21-gun salute; her body is all noise that she can’t make sense of. Both of Simone’s hands are on her now, one still covering her mouth, the other pressing firmly down on her breastbone. Jenna's vision is swimming, and she could almost swear she sees two distinct Simones: the first a laughing imp like the day they met, face full of mischief, her hand warm and real and solid; the second distant and obscure, the Simone that showed Jenna how to touch her on the little spare room bed (was that really an hour ago?), whispering, “Come on, it’s medicine,” before making Jenna feel impossibly, unspoolingly good.

In in the spare room she’d had some vague misgivings, but now she finds it’s not enough to be touched by Simone—she wants more. Yes, more please, sharp long fingers dragging down her thighs and illuminating the blood just below the surface of her skin. She needs to feel Simone, to be devoured by her, to be reborn like a forest consumed in fire. A little whimper escapes her lips, and in answer Simone’s nails dig into her flesh, her breath hot on Jenna’s forehead.

She wants to be strong, to howl at the mother moon and run and rend soft flesh with her mighty teeth and claws. She can feel the warm heart of Simone’s touch blooming inside of her, remaking her, when a yelp of pain or fear rips through the still wood, knocking Jenna back into herself.

Simone, too, is startled out of her attentive touches, and looks in annoyance at the giant wolf, who is bristling and cowering a few paces away from Clayton, eyes trained on him and snarling with all its jaws.

Jenna realizes muzzily she probably has seconds to do anything to disrupt Simone’s spell while her focus is elsewhere. She feels around her pockets for anything useful—her knife is in her backpack back at the cabin, goddammit—and her fingers close around something hard and rectangular. Brian’s tarot cards. She pulls them out and works the flap, but her fingers are numb and clumsy and the cards go spilling all over her supine body. 

Panicking, she dives back into her pockets and finds something else, something dry and gritty. The stupid pine cone from earlier. She’s strangely comforted to have physical evidence that something today has been real. She pulls it out desperately, thinking maybe she could throw it into Simone’s eyes and blind her while she runs away. Assuming she can stand, of course.

Simone’s focus is back on Jenna now, but she’s not smiling. She’s tense, focused, eyes trained on the crumbling mess in Jenna’s hand. 

Jenna’s eyes fall on the nearest tarot card, flashing in the moonlight. Eight of Wands. Action, quick thinking, rapid decisions.

“I made you this,” she says, holding the pine cone out to Simone, who blinks.

The next second, something is torn out of Jenna—a scream, maybe, although she doesn’t hear anything. She feels the aftershock of a sensation leaving her body, like the moment after a yawn or a sneeze. Simone stumbles back, doubled in pain, face crumpling and uncrumpling as if working through some horrible indigestion. She looks up at Jenna and for a second Jenna is afraid she’s ensorcelled again, so paralyzing is the rage and hate in Simone’s eyes. 

It’s only for a moment though, and then Simone is grabbing a handful of the wolf’s fur and swinging herself up onto its back. The massive creature bends to pick up the three unconscious humans, one in each jaw, hefting them as if they were rag dolls. 

And then they’re gone, bounding off into the trees, leaving a graveyard of trampled mushrooms in their wake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hello. It's been a minute. Life is hard and bad right now, have some whimsical frolicking in the spooky woods. I'll probably edit this a bit still, but in the meantime I wanted it to be be out in the world. Perhaps one more chapter left in this work? We shall see.


End file.
